Book as soon as you can. 1st half of month is already tight, but award availability in last half of February is OK (for now). Round-trip about 90k in coach, 200K in business. I don't believe you'll find awards beyond NRT or HND if you want to be on a HNL-Japan non-stop. Beyond Japan (or intra-Japan) will probably require separate tickets.

Datapoint: Upgrade failed on NH DEL-HND, Y fare, Y to J. Business class was sold out almost a week before departure.

Kind of disappointed but NH economy was pleasant enough.

Will UA refund the 40 PP or do I need to call? Not that it matters, I have lots of PP that are going to expire in 2024 and nothing planned anyways.

Outbound flight has been F4 since I booked this a little over three weeks ago. We are now T-5 days from departure and P2 and I just cleared. Return is still at F6 so I’m feeling very confident about those clearing as well.

Earlier this week my wife had an ANA itinerary, HNL-HND-HKG, with the HNL-HND sector in PE and the HND-HKG in economy. PPs were applied to both sectors months ago, and both upgrades cleared several days before the flights. Now, to see if the PPs will clear on her UA HKG-SFO sector coming back next week...

Maybe ... probably not. If not back in 2-3 days I'd Email MP to get them back.

I put in for a Z->F upgrade on NH212 for today. At around T-28, the booking went from “upgrade waitlisted” to “OK” and my plus points were redeposited. I wasn't really paying that close attention nor did I care that much (I’m already in the new 77W “Room” biz seat which I’ve never flown before) but was surprised that the waitlist was canceled. I expected the waitlist to go until departure.

any ideas?

I assume nothing can be done now that it’s less than T-24 so I’m not going to bother even trying to ask. The return is still waitlisted.

Thanks. I didn't check until now, but the PP were automatically refunded back to my account.

I had the same experience, as well as another poster IIRC. I speculate that if the upgrade doesn't clear 24-30 hours before departure, ANA cancels the upgrade request.

My upgrade from PE -> J was canceled within 24 hours on Nov 11. I thought this may have been because I checked in online to my PE seat. One could still purchase 3 J seats in the morning of the 9:05PM fight after my request was canceled.

I had the same experience - pluspoints were refunded 24 hours in advance. This was J>F and they were still selling 4 seats

I have zero experience using PPs on NH flights. I have read UA's website and the Wiki. So I just want to make sure that under no circumstance I can use PPs to upgrade any economy fare class to a PY seat on NH816?

*A upgrades don't work to PY. You can upgrade Y to J and J to F.

Too bad I only have 40 PPs left and that's not enough to upgrade to J!

What's the reason for NH preventing the ability to upgrade to PY?

40 is what you need to upgrade on any partner airline, there is no differentiation between Y to J or J to F.

Nothing to do with NH at all, not possible for any *A upgrade. Some thing with awards, not available for PE

Oops, I was thinking of 80 for round-trip.